Stephen Colbert overshadows The Lord of the Rings Shadow of the Past sequel

31 March 2026

A sequel to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, made between 2001 and 2003, is in the works.

Much of the interest in the story to date though has centred on Stephen Colbert, who is to be one of the screenwriters. Colbert will collaborate with Peter McGee, his son, and Philippa Boyens, co-writer of the earlier film trilogy screenplays.

Colbert is presently host of The Late Show, an American TV talk show, but his tenure concludes this May. It is said that participating in writing the screenplay is a dream come true for Colbert.

And while the point has been raised, not quite so much has been said about the source material for the proposed sequel, being several chapters — three to eight — from The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of the three volumes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novel. In other words, the sequel to The Lord of the Rings films will be based on events occurring relatively early in the epic.

The new film, tentatively titled Shadow of the Past, will be set about fourteen years after The Return of the King, the final part of the series. The story will reportedly see several characters recount some of the adventures of the departed Hobbit, Frodo Baggins.

There’s a clever way to contrive a sequel to story, where one doesn’t really exist. But Stephen Colbert is co-writing the screenplay. We shouldn’t be thinking about anything else.

Why though can we not write new stories all together, without the need to rehash and remix, ones that have already been told? Of course we know. The Lord of the Rings, along with the likes of Star Trek, and Star Wars, have captive audiences who can’t get enough of these stories.

The thing is Star Trek and Star Wars are set in large universes (galaxies) where there is latitude — within some degree of reason — for storylines to unfold in numerous directions.

The Lord of the Rings is something else though, and the story seems complete with the existing novels. Even Tolkien was against the idea, having tried to write a sequel himself, but later abandoning the attempt. Why can we not defer to Tolkien’s judgement in this regard?

Over hiring, not AI, behind recent tech industry redundancies

31 March 2026

Julian Fell, Teresa Tan, and Joshua Byrd, writing for writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

“It’s just gravity,” says George Double, a Sydney-based recruiter who has been working with several engineers who were laid off from Block. Block and Atlassian — another company that cited AI as justification for heavy lay-offs — were “bloated”, he says, and needed to downsize regardless of the impacts of AI. Both companies were paying well-above-average salaries for engineers and hired heavily during the COVID years.

Over hiring in recent years, leaving some companies overstaffed, may be the real reason companies including Atlassian, Amazon, and Block, have made large numbers of employees redundant.

Of course, no one wants to admit that, particularly to the workers facing retrenchment. Saying “advances in technology” sounds a whole lot better than “we should never have hired you.”

But then again…

US court finds Meta, Google, failed to warn users of the dangers of their platforms

27 March 2026

Jonathan Vanian, writing for CNBC:

Jurors ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiff, who claimed that Meta and YouTube’s negligence played a “substantial factor” in causing mental health-related harms. Compensatory damages were assessed at $3 million, with Meta on the hook for 70% and YouTube the remaining 30%. Punitive damages amount to an additional $3 million, with $2.1 million to be paid by Meta and $900,000 by YouTube.

Meta — who all up have been fined just over five million dollars (American) — plans to appeal the judgement. Not on account of the speeding ticket size of the fine (for a company with Meta’s capitalisation that is), but because they “respectfully disagree” with the verdict.

A separate Wall Street Journal article (pay wall) suggested the Los Angeles court decision may trigger numerous legal claims against social media companies, potentially presenting them with an existential dilemma.

An existential dilemma? Can anyone else see these organisations going through some of self reckoning, and changing their ways? No, neither can I.

Do you enjoy forty-nine megabytes of extraneous data with your news?

26 March 2026

Shubham Bose found the publishers of some news websites — often reputable outlets — are forcing readers to download, in some cases, an additional forty-nine megabytes of needless scripts and data with their articles. This might explain why some of us need to keep our phones charging (a no-no I know) while reading the news:

When you open a website on your phone, it’s like participating in a high-frequency financial trading market. That heat you feel on the back of your phone? The sudden whirring of fans on your laptop? Contributing to that plus battery usage are a combination of these tiny scripts.

We need a browser with an all-scripts kill switch, such as the Quiche Browser (presently for iPhone only), which has the option to include a JavaScript (JS) kill switch on its tool bar.

Sure, we can sift through our browser settings and disable JS, but a one click button, on the interface, is a more elegant solution. Kill switches shouldn’t stop at JS though, give us more. How about AI slop, and auto-play video, for starters.

Talk the talk but cannot circle back and walk the walk

26 March 2026

Researchers at New York’s Cornell University have devised something called the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale. Long story short, the scale measures how convincing corporate jargon and buzzwords are. Offending terms include actualise, adaptive coherence, credentialing, pressure-test, and the particularly loathsome align, when agree would do.

A high score on the scale, meaning someone cannot hear enough of this… language, suggests they may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer:

People who scored higher on the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale tended to perform worse on tests measuring analytical thinking, cognitive reflection, and fluid intelligence. They also made poorer judgments in workplace decision-making scenarios designed to mimic common business problems.

That’s a conclusion that will come as no surprise to anyone in this corner of the web.

If like me though, you struggle to comprehend corporate speak, much less talk or write the lingo, this translator compiled by Kagi will help should you, for whatever reason, need to talk the talk.

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Twitter, the upstart social media platform that stunted the growth, and more, of the web

24 March 2026

Dave Winer:

A bit of history. Read this post from 20 years ago by Phil Jones. That’s what I was trying to do back then, just as Twitter came online. I didn’t know it then but was the moment when the web stopped growing.

I don’t think, in 2006, anyone realised, nor could have realised, the profound impact Twitter, as one of the earliest social media platforms, was going to have, specifically on blogs and websites, and more generally, and later, the web.

Twitter launched smack bang in the middle of a period often referred to as the golden age of blogging, a time when websites and blogs seemed invincible and invulnerable. Believe it or not, they were the only game in town.

If anything was going to change the status quo, it wasn’t going to be some upstart microblogging platform where people said too much about their private lives, and what they had for lunch.

How wrong we were. But who was to know, back then, how influential and powerful the social media platforms would become, and potential threat they posed to the free flow of news and information.

It is possible to escape this quagmire by creating, collaboratively, a social media platform, impervious to the grips of monopoly control, and tech-billionaires? I thought we already had, in the form of Mastodon and Bluesky, but no one can agree which is the right model.

Is there a third way of some sort? And if so, will this option gain sufficient traction, nullify the platforms we want nullified, or remain a niche offering, like the alternatives presently available?

When it comes to social media platforms twenty years after Twitter arrived, it seems like we only go in circles. Ever decreasing circles.

The 2026 Oscars: the end of Hollywood, and film, as we know them?

20 March 2026

From film and TV writer David Chen’s review of this year’s Academy Awards:

The concept of a 3.5-hour broadcast where you watch big movie stars accept awards and deliver heartfelt speeches is no longer as desirable or profitable as it once was.

The Oscar’s TV audience has been steadily declining for about ten years, as more people have taken to watching only segments of the ceremony on YouTube and social media. Indeed, from 2029, the awards will screen exclusively on YouTube, but, as Chen notes, this isn’t solely a reflection of the changing viewing preferences of those watching the ceremony:

While I think that [YouTube] will actually be a better home for the telecast in many ways, and may even lead to some innovation for the broadcast (a man can dream), it’s also yet another sign of the fading primacy of movies as the center of our culture.

This is a perturbing thought. Is our appetite for feature length films diminishing in favour of the short-attention-span-friendly brain-rot video clips posted on social networks? Film production and streaming company Netflix think they know the answer. In a recent interview with podcast show host Joe Rogan, American actor Matt Damon shared some of Netflix’s production advice:

Damon told Rogan that the streamer asks film-makers to dumb things down a little, adding a big action set piece early on to keep viewers interested, and advising them that: “It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.

Enough said?

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AI spam, the latter day internet, force digg.com offline for now

19 March 2026

digg.com, social news aggregator, and once the front page of the internet, has closed its doors for the duration, and let a number of staff go, just months after officially relaunching.

digg* says an onslaught of AI agents, and automated accounts, are behind the decision, together with an internet, that in 2026, is different. That’s sure something a few of us can attest to.

And after a long time out of circulation, they’ve found making a comeback a little trickier than anticipated, according to a post presently on the site’s frontpage:

We underestimated the gravitational pull of existing platforms. Network effects aren’t just a moat, they’re a wall. The loyalty users have to the communities they’ve already built elsewhere is profound. Getting people to move is a hard enough problem. Getting them to move and bring their people with them is something else entirely.

The good news for those who had looked forward to digg’s return is the shutdown is meant to be short lived. In addition, original co-founder Kevin Rose, who helped revive the site, will shortly commence working at digg in a full time capacity. digg adherents can only hope his presence will help steady the ship in the waters that are today’s internet.

* according to digg’s Wikipedia page, the site’s name is stylised in lowercase. Just about all the references I could see featured an uppercase letter d. I’ve gone lowercase here, in the same way disassociated is stylised with a lower case d.

There is nothing irksome than styling disassociated with an uppercase d, and the same goes for digg.

Has the true identity of British street artist Banksy been revealed or not?

19 March 2026

Has the cover been blown on the true identity of British street artist Banksy?

Some people seem to think so. A British tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, claim they learned Banksy’s actual name in 2008, something that has — apparently — now been verified.

Banksy however, through his lawyer, disputes the finding, says Achol Arok, reporting on the story for The Daily Aus (Instagram link).

Assuming the latest reporting is correct, I’m surprised, with his remarkable profile, that Banksy has succeeded in concealing his actual identity for so long,

I imagine Banksy’s had help protecting this information hitherto, but the feat is impressive given the daring nature of his works, many in public places, often subject to much surveillance.

Buzzfeed facing bankruptcy after AI gamble unravels

19 March 2026

Victor Tangermann, writing for Futurism:

The company reported a net loss of $57.3 million in 2025 in an earnings report released on Thursday. In an official statement, the company glumly hinted at the possibility of going under sooner rather than later, writing that “there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

This is distressing news. I knew a couple of former Sydney based Buzzfeed writers, and even visited the office on one occasion. Numerous media outlets are working with AI agents, but few are allowing them to run the news desk. I’m hoping Buzzfeed is able to work their way through this difficulty.

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